Quote" When asked why it chose Romo, whose team was recently eliminated from playoff contention, a rep for EA cited NFL Players Association concerns over the "Madden Curse," and implied that no one would lose too much sleep at the Cowboys organization should Romo fall victim to it."

If you believe everything you read, you would have thought that San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson was just lucky enough not to get the Madden cover endorsement. Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc officially announced last night that Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young would grace the cover of the next version of the jinxed popular video game. "Vince was the guy all along," EA's director of marketing Chris Erb told the San Diego Union-Tribune today.

Except that's not exactly the case. Multiple industry sources have told me that Tomlinson, in fact, was asked of his interest, was presented with an offer, and told Electronic Arts he was not interested. Tomlinson's turning down of Electronic Arts, we're told, doesn't have much to do with the highly-publicized curse, which has been attributed to the recent misfortune of Michael Vick, Donovan McNabb and Shaun Alexander. It has more to do with the fact that the people at Electronic Arts know that, for many, their cover is seen as the "Wheaties box endorsement" -- in that athletes are usually so honored they are willing to do it for less than market value. Tomlinson wasn't.